


Louder Than Words

by endae



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Comfort, Family, Fluff, Gen, Illnesses, Post-Canon, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 01:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endae/pseuds/endae
Summary: Winter break in Gravity Falls is off to a rocky start. After an impassioned round of karaoke and some poor study habits she's just now seeing the consequences of, Mabel loses her voice and it's only the second day in town.While she does what she can to close the language barrier between her and the rest of the family, one by one, they show her just how golden silence could be.





	Louder Than Words

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr Link](http://endae.tumblr.com/post/154778428025/louder-than-words)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Some context: Like most fans certainly have, I’m sure, I’m constantly forgetting that Soos and his Abuelita took over the Shack after the end of the show…I’ll learn one day. Please do me a solid and pretend that Soos very graciously lets the family have the house when they’re all together (which are rare occasions!), thank you!
> 
> (takes place a little over a year after the finale)

In retrospect, maybe karaoke wasn’t such a stellar idea.

It’s a thought that barrels her head the morning after — only slightly harder than the winter chill when the bus doors opened, and more on par with the way she’d tackled Grunkle Stan as he stood waiting for them.

So it _hurts._ And so does her throat.

As more pieces of the morning come to her, it’s the nighttime recollections that flood back first. Hugs and hellos, hair ruffles and playful nudges. There were seafaring stories and the horrors of school, the greasiest pizza the town had to offer and…

And a cover that maybe she’d put a _little_ too much heart into.

At six twenty-three on the dot, she wakes up. Not her usual, and by no means her intention…but at the back of her throat, the telltale ache beckoning her to consciousness is too stomach-turning to ignore.

_‘Uh oh...’_

Leave it to Mabel Pines, self-proclaimed karaoke master, to scream her voice out on their second day of winter break.

* * *

“See, I _told_ you it wasn’t a good idea.”

At six twenty-seven on the dot, Dipper’s up too, roused by her distressed moaning.

He chides her from across the attic, already starting to button up a flannel long sleeve over his nighttime tee. The attic’s definitely cooler without the summer rays to warm the wood, a fact made further apparent by the Shack’s lack of a heating unit. “You were already starting to come down with something before we left.”

Alright, so maybe her rendition of _Welcome to the Amazon_ may have been a bit over-the-top. Maybe they didn’t need the ear-shattering performance. But it’s not like she would've given it to them any different.

Braving the cold, she frees herself from the blankets to swing her legs around the side of the bed. Immediately, she feels the frigid air nip at her legs and toes, and her mind is already wandering to the fleece pants at the bottom of her bag. She wonders how only wearing a nightgown to sleep had ever been within the realm of a good idea. Summer’s been well past over.

_“But it wasn’t_ _—_ _!”_ Okay, ow. Little softer. Mabel swallows down the ache alongside the volume, dampening her voice to a wispy murmur. “But it wasn’t even this bad last night. Or the night before. I was taking care of myself.”

He dead pans. “…Taking care of yourself.”

“Yes, taking care of myself! You know, that study break stuff you taught me about,” she says. The twenty minute-ten minute rule, the snacking. Outlines and annotations. The works.

…Unless he didn’t teach her everything. Which, given how strict his own study regime could be, was very possible.

“Really? ‘Pretty sure pulling an all-nighter to study isn’t exactly ‘taking care of yourself.’”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she nags, just barely above a whisper. It’s nowhere near as patronizing as she wants it to be, but enough not to stop her. “Mr. _I-function-on-four-hours-a-day_.”

Granted, he’s better versed at this. Sleeping anything less than seven hours is foreign territory to her, but it’s a regular Tuesday for him.

He brushes her off with a sigh, fishing inside the suitcase beside his bed. “Yeah, well I’m used to it — and I make up for it later. But that’s beside the point.” Bingo. Wool socks. “Forget the study breaks, there’s a little more to taking care of yourself than just that. This is what happens when you don’t.”

The irony of this isn’t lost on her.

“Whhhhyyy…” she croaks, burying he face in her hands. She feels it now, the flush in her face. She’s sick alright. He’s right. “I was being so good about it too…”

“If darting out into the cold with sopping wet hair is your definition of being _‘good about it,’_ then yeah, you were doing great.”

Alright, _point taken._ She hadn’t been taking the greatest care of herself. But who does during exam week?

“This stinks,” she pouts, bringing the edges of her blanket up and around her shoulders. Her voice is getting seemingly airier the longer she talks, but at least for now, she values the miracle of still having it at all. “At this rate, I’ll lose what’s left of it by tomorrow! How do I save it?!”

Seriously, _ow._ He suppresses a snort as she grabs for her throat, impulsively trying to mask it as a cough.

“You could start by taking it a notch down.”

With each breath, she could feel it trickling deeper in her throat. What did she do to warrant _this?_ It was _one_ slip up! Only _one_ ill-prepared dress in the morning. Only one time she skipped dinner just to finish that English essay. Only one time she stayed up all night for that history project...well, maybe two nights...straight...

Yikes, alright. She’s almost certain the flush in her face is embarrassment this time.

Like it was possible she could be worse at this than _Dipper._

As the reality of it settles in, Mabel sinks deeper into the blanket, keeping her eyes to the floorboards. This was going to ruin everything. No snowball fights, no sledding, no ritual winter-anything…Pending a trip to Blanket Town, she hears the creak of Dipper’s bed across the room, the tips of his socks poking into view.  

He plants both his hands to her shoulders, squeezing.

“Hey, don’t look so down.”

Eyes floating up to meet her brother’s, Mabel finds that bittersweet look he has waiting for her. Despite his teasing, he’s probably as thrilled about this as she is. Break wouldn’t be too fun if they weren’t both a hundred percent.

“Remember when I lost my voice a few weeks ago? It was only a couple of days,” he comforts. “You won’t be like this the whole time we’re here.”

_‘Or so we hope.’_ Her luck, much like her 'self care', was impeccable.

“Yeah, I guess so…” she mutters, absently scratching at her arm. Then, pointedly, “...it better go away soon. This is gonna make drinking my mega-ultra-special hot chocolate a lot harder.”

He cranes his head towards the door.

“Come on, let’s see if Grunkle Stan or Grunkle Ford can help.”

* * *

Leave it to Stan Pines, self-proclaimed cold, dark, empty soul, to be the first one running for every medicine in the house at the first hint that his beloved niece is sick.

“Alright sweetie, open up.”

Mabel sheepishly takes the thermometer into her mouth when he sticks it out for her. There’s a hand pushing back her bangs to feel her forehead, and another pair probing the sides of her neck. The arsenal of questions Ford has ready for her already clues her into just the type of week she was going to face.

Leave it to both of them, really, making a fuss like this over something as simple as a cold.

Scattered around the kitchen table, they’ve emptied three drawers for anything of worth. The search only yields a dozen cough drops and some packets of tea, give or take a stray ibuprofen tablet.

The travel sized first-aid kit under the sink gives them something, at least — a congestion cold rub and a single dose liquid gel. Dipper has to do a double-take at the meat-thermometer stowed away with the rest of its contents.

When Stan retreats from her with the (proper) thermometer to look it over, Ford’s trading places with him to cup the bottom of her chin, tilting up. Keeping his eyes on her, he blindly reaches for the pocket flashlight on the table. “And how long has she been like this?”

“She started feeling bad about a week ago.”

Dipper reaches over to help close the distance between Ford and the flashlight. He watches the two of them at work from another chair, sitting backwards with his arms crossed over the top of it. Mabel isn’t ignorant of the way he’s deliberately left out her role in her own downward spiral, and couldn’t be more appreciative. She’d never hear the end of it.

“—And then she just woke up like this. She could barely talk.”

An understatement. In the span of twenty minutes, it feels like she’s lost more than half the little volume she'd been clinging on to. It’s fleeting with every breath she takes, and frankly, she’d be lucky if she saw to the end of the day with even a whisper.

Satisfied with his checkup, Ford steps away, tapping her neck to signal his completion. Mabel leans back in her chair when he does, eyes fixed on him as she waits for an answer.

She’s not entirely sure he has one.

Not eating right, not sleeping right, cramming…Presuming last night was the tipping point, _‘Death by Karaoke’_ was shaping up to be a very solid, very puzzling diagnosis.

Ford acknowledges the elephant in the room, breaking the tension with some hybrid of a chuckle and clearing his throat.

“Well...I suppose an impassioned round of karaoke will do that.”

“Ehhhh, don’t listen to him,” Stan cuts in, elbowing Ford just below his ribcage. “Someone’s just bitter 'n wants to put round two on hold to practice.”

She laughs for a second — but then it hurts. Wincing at the flare up, she grabs for her throat again, and it dampens their expressions. Wearing something a touch more serious, Ford leans down to meet her at eye level for a real answer. The preface of a hand on her shoulder already tells her it won't be good.

“Mabel, I’m sure you’ve already reached the same conclusion I have, but I think it would be in your best interests to rest your voice for the time being.”

_There_ it is.

Ford’s advice comes unsurprising. He didn’t enjoy delivering the news any more than she enjoyed receiving it. That much she could tell. “I think it would be worthwhile to refrain from using it as much as you can.”

She frowns. Again, not a surprise given how the morning had been going...but it’s still a bummer to hear.

“While I know it would be impossible for you to stop using it entirely, I would suggest that we keep it to minimum, in that we don’t strain it more than what’s necessary.”

No talking _at all?_ At first thought, he had it right on the money — impossible. There was no way she could go this whole trip without uttering a single word until she got better! Who even knew when that would be?

But she mulls over his words with new meaning. The implications from them, taking it literally. To stop talking entirely…and surely if she didn’t use her voice at all, it would heal that much more quickly...

She’s not up for a lot right now, but a challenge wasn’t one of them.

A light bulb goes in her head. Then she smirks.

“Pfft, Grunkle Ford, this is nothing,” she croaks, winking. “And actually, I think I've already got an idea to fix it — a _fix-kit!_ Just you wait.”

Stan ruffles her hair with a chuckle, tangling up her bed head even more. It’s a mess and so is she, but her plan to overcome this is as foolproof as possible. “Of course you do, kiddo.”

No dumb sickness was going to keep her quiet.

Of that, she’d make sure.

* * *

From morning to midnight, Mabel works away at…something.

What begins in the kitchen ends in their bedroom, but there are trails of it between the two of them. Stan finds small snippets of paper and sticker backs stuck in the carpet, mounting suspicion that it’s a craft project of some sort. The curiosity builds the longer she doesn’t talk about it, but he leaves her be as she crafts what she may.

Ford steals a glance into the kitchen late in the afternoon as he’s grabbing for a pen. Mabel gives up one of her own (without speaking), and he catches a glimpse of her work-in-progress..

He returns with a tickled expression Stan can’t completely make out, but he never presses him about her secrets. Only time would tell.

* * *

As they’re prepping for bed, Dipper finally takes notice of the state of the attic.

"You uh...were really serious about this _'fix-it.’_ "

Dipper eyes the collection multiplying around her bed, gawking. Like a hurricane struck her side of the room, he finds colored papers piled and strewn about the floor, some stacked and dangerously close to toppling over. Slathered in glitter, sequins, and every rhinestone under the sun, it becomes all too apparent just how busy she’s kept herself.

“How many of these did you _make?_ ”

In vain, she swallows hard to clear her throat, still snipping away with the scissors. “Over a hundred…”

It’s barely, _barely_ a whisper when she says it. In the course of a day, her sickness has managed to steal whatever was left of her voice, leaving her with some sad semblance of a broken squeaky toy.

He shakes his head in disbelief. A _hundred?_ “Mabel, isn’t this going a little overboard? It’s not like you need to completely replace your voice. You really don’t have to do all this.”

“But I have to,” she interjects, raspy. She’s keen on keeping her eyes trained on her handiwork, not looking at him. Dipper picks up on it quickly, because she only did that when something was eating at her. “It’s my job to make everyone happy! I can’t do that without a voice.”

“Sure you can. You do it all the time.”

A sweet thought, but an iffy one. And if this was going to be the way she would spend herself, so be it. There are more than enough of these to make up for tomorrow, and it’ll buy her time for the rest of the week. She had to have a voice somehow. They just had to know, because…

“…If I can’t even talk, who’s going to tell you that you’re my favorite brother?” she questions, glancing his way. It’s probably not the turn he was expecting this conversation to take, but he takes it for face value. “—Or that Grunkle Stan’s jokes are funny? Or that Grunkle Ford’s really good at telling stories?”

_‘Who’s going to make you all smile?’_

“Who’s going to tell you all how special I think you are?”

Not exactly all that. And maybe not even that, word for word. Dipper still gets the message. She always had a lot to say to her loved ones, and the thought of not being able to express any of it stung. It was her civic duty to tell them. He had to agree with her on that.

Except that he doesn’t.

In fact, he challenges it. With the clearest voice possible, he gives her what, deep down, she didn’t realize she needed to hear.  

“…Do you really need to say it for us to know?”

She stops clipping at that.

It’s…genuine, how he says it. She’s half expecting some teasing comeback to follow, but he lets the thought drift without anything to follow it up.

It’s different this time, the air surrounding his words.

“I mean, I’m not going to stop whatever…” he motions at her pile, “ _this_ is supposed to be. But maybe…keep that in mind.”

She does. Maybe a little too well. Mabel resumes cutting away at her current work — ironically enough, a paper sign reading ‘ _Good idea!’_

“Besides, we want you better. And you won’t be if you start staying up all night again.”

“I know, I know,” she finally says, reaching for the bottle of glitter on the dresser. “I’ll go to bed in a bit. Promise.”

She’s in bed within the hour.

Mabel spends half of it still trying to make sense of his words.

* * *

His sentiment comes a little clearer later that night.

Or rather, that morning.

The whine of the attic door is enough to pull her from slumber, but there's hardly a blame to place. Sleeping had already been starting to get difficult, enough that mere footsteps could wake her up.

Blinking at the doorway and the light pouring through it, it isn’t hard to make out Stan and Ford’s silhouettes as they slip into the room. For as heavy-footed as they both can be, they’re astoundingly silent when they cross the attic. Blocky shadows protrude from their hands, but when her eyes refocus, she recognizes them as folded blankets.

A creak of wood, then a whisper.

_“’kid wasn’t lyin', it's an icebox up here.”_

They’re the only words she hears. The rest comes in motions.

Soundless and light, they both tiptoe to the twins. Feigning sleep, Mabel shuts her eyes as they near the beds, but watches through cracked lids as Stan hovers over her mattress. Gently, he lays the blanket over her, bringing it up to just below her chin.

Across the room, she sees Ford doing the same for Dipper.

But where Ford backs away, Stan takes the extra measure of tucking her in. His hands are careful as he secures it around her, wary not to touch her more than he needs to and risk waking her up. He never does, not that he needs to know. It takes everything in her to suppress the smile.

As quietly as they slip in, their departure is just as discreet.

Mabel lies still in the dark minutes after they leave, eyes boring into the ceiling above. She peeks her brother’s way, but doubtful that Ford had risen him at all.

He draws the same long breaths as he had before they’d come in, still as the night.

Even with the raw ache growing in her throat, the extra layer of warmth helps to lull her back to sleep. It’s as she’s drifting that she can’t help but think of their Grunkles’ sweet gesture, one that put a little more faith into her ‘fix-it.’ You don't need words for everything.

Silence doesn’t feel as intimidating after that.

* * *

Sure enough, what little left of her voice is gone by the next morning.

It doesn’t faze her though, not really — she’s come prepared this time. Bright-eyed and determined, she descends the stairs with Dipper trudging a whole flight behind her, fastening her blanket cape around her shoulders in one hand, and a mix bag of papers in the other. For as many as she’s made, she magically contains her little hurricane snuggly into a single small tote.

And sure enough, they catch on too when she bursts into the kitchen to flash the first of her many creations — an orange cut-out with a smiley-sun rising over the hills: _‘Good morning!’_

She brings them wherever she goes, a stockpile of pieces of paper taped to popsicle sticks. A mechanism she's cheekily dubbed _‘sign language,’_ it carries her messages where her voice couldn’t. True to her disposition, Mabel keeps _‘please’_ and _‘thank you’_ on hand the most, for favors as simple as pancakes served and tissues given.

She has a sign for practically everything.

When Stan cries out after dropping a bowl on his foot, she’s scrambling in her bag to whip out _‘Are you okay?’_ on blue construction paper with several frowny faces. He’s practically healed by it.

When Dipper asks how she’s feeling, she instinctively pulls out a sign reading _‘I’m good! I’m giving my voice a break,’_ with a humanized ‘voice’ under a blanket with a steaming mug. Amused at the drawing, he takes it as a sign, too, eyeing Ford by the kettle. “Then maybe something warm will help it.”

Her minimalism shows too. When Ford fixes the honey-lemon drink she never asks for, she flashes him a simple white card, something smaller than the others — a single heart, red and loving at the middle.

She sees the smiles it brings to their faces. Sees how entertained it keeps them, the laughs from a few of her creations. Mabel sees the gap closing between them, as if she’d never lost her voice to begin with. They read her the same, enough to carry on like she’s still the loudest of them all.

What she sees is how happy it makes them.

What she doesn’t see is how they return the favor.

Mabel Pines goes about her winter break with every commonplace phrase at the ready, armed for small talk at a moment's notice. She keeps her sayings close and her kindnesses closer, never truly realizing that, slowly, they start to abandon spoken word too.

One by one, they show her just how golden silence could be.

* * *

With an hour left of daylight, Ford takes her and Dipper into the forest.

The snow becomes more and more pristine the farther in they walk, and the whole trip, Ford relays his earliest winters in Gravity Falls. The bitterness of his latter years isn’t lost on either of them, but the smile he wears while reminiscing puts the thought at ease.

In nostalgic anecdotes, he paints a brighter picture of his youth. His first snowfall in town. His first contact with the wildlife that thrived in it.

It’s inevitably followed by his first encounter with some not so amiable ones — but even he can laugh at it now, fondly telling of some terrorizing snow beast that left him holed up in the Shack for three whole days. Between her brother and uncle, the walk down memory lane becomes a sort of rambling more familiar to them, but the awe of the white wonderland around them keeps her from chiming in too much.

It’s only their marks left in the forest, three sets of footprints to guide them back home when the time comes.

The expedition is a last-minute decision, but one Mabel doesn’t turn down when Ford extends the delicate offer to her. She wasn’t about to let her sickness keep her inside, no siree. The forest in winter was too rare an opportunity to pass up, and she drops everything the second that he asks.

She races out into the cold right behind them, no wet hair this time — she’s even taken the liberty of wearing two hats.

With a thick coat, gloves, and two pairs of leggings on beneath her skirt, she would think that the evening chill had nothing on her. But even in her layers, she feels it bite through with every step she takes. In the rush of excitement, she almost doesn’t care, but it’s only when they’re a good distance deep into the forest that it finally clicks with her _why_ it’s so cold — and how much it was seeping into her neck.

Walking ahead of her, the boys don’t see her slap a hand to her face in stupidity.

Of all things to neglect, she forgot a _scarf_.

Berating herself the whole trip, Mabel sinks her chin down as far as it’ll go, anything just to shield her throat. As if to taunt her, she sees her breath pooling out in front of her, miniature fogs that blow back into her face. It makes it that much harder to concentrate on the beauty waiting for them, but she focuses on their surroundings as best she can. It really is beautiful out here.

She doesn’t fall behind far enough for them to notice. They chit chat feet in front of her, fragments of conversation that she can only pick up through sluggish cognition. It takes true willpower to concentrate on whatever the cold isn't already clouding.

_“…usually unearth themselves when the temperature drops…”_ Ford’s voice cuts through her thoughts. _“…difficult to see in summer…”_

_“…t’s amazing…”_ Dipper’s voice filters through too, light with wonder. _“I never thought that there’d be any….”_

Fighting off a bout of shivers, Mabel zips her coat up another eighth of an inch that isn’t there. In a futile attempt to ignore the icy air, she tries to make sense of their discussion ahead of her…but it’s _so cold,_ and _why on earth did she forget a scarf._

It’s halfway through a thought about the gnomes that Dipper’s eyes finally look back to hers, a spark in them that wavers when they reach her. Like the last glows of the sun, his face softens when he takes in the sight of her, and she can only imagine how much paler she looks out here in the snowscape. She must be, because his eyes linger a little longer on her than they should..

He stops in his tracks, eyes flicking between her hats and her coat. Her gloves.

And he reaches for his scarf.

Without hesitation, Dipper unwinds it from his neck. She follows his hands as they maneuver through the cold, quivers that don’t hamper him in the least bit. His dexterity is no better than her’s out here, but he frees himself from the garment in seconds.

And then it’s warm.

Dipper secures it snug around her, wrapping as many times as it’ll go. The difference is night and day — the warmth he’d kindled in it rushes to bring a comfort long needed. Her ailing neck savors its newfound solace, and for once, it may as well be the first time she can think clearly.

He punctuates it with a gentle tug of her sleeve, the smallest means to bring her up to him and Ford’s pace. He wears that half smile he always makes, often shy at his own kindnesses, before turning to face the trail again.

“Hey Grunkle Ford…” he says, less animated than before. Dipper’s voice is thick with fatigue and congested like hers, and she’s beginning to think that the cold might be getting to him, too. “…'think we can start heading back soon?”

Maybe it was getting to Ford too, given how quickly he reciprocates the thought.

They turn a one-eighty to return to the Shack, Ford keen on both of them walking ahead. They never slow down enough that he waits for them, but the last half of the journey home sees him placing a hand on both their shoulders to keep them oriented on the trek back.

The whole time, Mabel’s hand never leaves the scarf around her neck.

The whole time, the smile behind it never leaves her lips.

* * *

Baking cookies is a lot more fun when it’s a game of charades, Mabel finds.

Her silence isn’t as much a hindrance as it is an opportunity. Ford takes his own soundless oath out of solidarity, handing her the cookbook and forfeiting control of the kitchen. The glint in her eye couldn’t get any bigger.

Ford isn’t great at it, and that might be the best part. It’s a miracle he gets ‘eggs,’ but the hand gestures she makes for it might be giving too much away.

He scoops her too many cups of flour and too few cups of sugar. Not enough butter and too much salt. Mabel spells it out to him in signals, but she may as well be equally bad at this when it doesn’t involve paper and pen.

(“Oven…and Pitt Cola? Baked Pitt Cola? Mabel, I don’t think…oh. _Baking soda_.”)

It hurts to laugh, but she can’t help them as they come bubbling up from the nonsense. His guesses sound like horrific recipes on their own, and there’s the mischievous thought of how fun it’d be to try them out on their own.

It takes far more than the twenty-minute prep time listed in the book, but they’re both having too much fun to care.

The kitchen’s a _mess_ when they’re done, but their cookies couldn’t be more perfect. With all their hiccups, they come out stunningly free of lumps and cracks. The dough cutouts line the baking trays four-by-four, and Mabel blows them each a kiss as Ford closes the oven door on them.

She’s three steps ahead of him as she lays out the icing and sprinkles, but he’s right behind her with stencils and piping bags. When they turn to face each other, it’s only then that they truly take in the sight of their counterpart: broken eggshells in her hair, a million stains on her apron. There’s a misting of flour across Ford’s lenses, a six fingered handprint across his chest. Somehow _even more stains_ than her.

They both break, a hearty laugh and a wheezy giggle in unison.

Ford starts to removes his glasses to wipe the flour coating them against his sweater. “These’ll be in the oven for some time. Why don’t you go sit down for a bit?”

Mabel makes one final sign to him, but not really. It’s as she’s reaching for a towel to help clean that he pats her head to stop her. The dusting of flour raining down around her doesn’t go unnoticed. Not that she minds — they’re both due for a shower anyway.

“Ah, I’ll tidy up in here. I’ll call you when they're ready to decorate.”

She hesitates at first, but ultimately gives in. Their game winds her more than she expects it to, and the kitchen’s toasty enough that she could fall asleep standing if she tried. Beaming her thanks, Mabel strips herself of the dirtied apron, skipping to plop herself down in the living room chair.

Cozying up in the cushions, she pays what little attention she can to the TV. There’s a Ducktective block this time of night, reruns she’s seen well into one, two o’clock in the morning. The thought of even staying awake that long is a dizzying one, but they won’t be up for long. Fifteen minutes to bake, ten more for them to cool…

Yeah. She’ll just rest her eyes for a minute…

* * *

 …or an hour. Maybe two.

When Mabel finally does open her eyes again, it’s not to the same glow of the TV that she’d closed them to. It’s dark. There’s a blanket on her that she doesn’t remember throwing over herself, and a sweet scent wafting through the air. Rubbing what sleep she can from her eyes, she sits up to find many of the lights dimmed and the kitchen light out completely.

It isn’t sickness that forces her awake as much as it is the worry. He couldn’t have frosted all of them without her, could he? Did he just take care of it by himself?

Before she has a chance to launch herself from the chair to find out, she spots a neatly folded note atop the table. Still in a sleepy daze, she reaches for it with imperfect precision, bringing it closer to read in the low light.

The clean, elegant penmanship sets her stomach at ease. The message even more so.

_‘We’ll decorate them in the morning. Sleep tight.’_

Breathing a sigh of relief, Mabel lets the note fall to her lap, craning her head back. Thank goodness. That was her favorite part, after all.

It’s as she’s sinking back into the chair that she takes a second glance, spotting the plate that the note had been concealing. With revived curiosity she leans forward to inspect it: a single cookie, a dash of red glazed on the top of it that tells her enough.

The icing heart on it warms her’s the rest of the night.

* * *

“Hey pumpkin.”

She’s knitting on the living room floor when he finds her. Mabel peels her eyes from the yarn to glance over at the living room’s entrance, Stan idling by its threshold with both hands behind his back.

She’s eased up on the sign usage a bit. There’s a _‘Hello!’_ somewhere in her tote bag if she looks hard enough, but Mabel settles for a simple wave of her hand.

“How’s that voice doin'?”

Okay...that’s a little tougher. Out of habit, she wraps her hand around her throat, rubbing. It’s still sore, but that’s nothing new. Thumbing through her paper sign collection, she shows him a battered one she’s been all too used to waving: _‘I’m fine!’_

For the most part, at least. The details were getting a little lost these days.

Stan nods in acknowledgment, but doesn’t move. Mabel wonders if he was even planning to, because he hovers by the entry way as if waiting for some type of permission. She ushers him closer with an inviting smile, patting a spot beside her on the floor for him to come join.

He does. Mabel sticks her needles into the yarn ball to put it aside, focusing her attention entirely on Stan when he takes a seat next to her.

He looks…anxious.

Patient, she sits waiting. Stan holds his silence all the while, but the rest of him says everything that he won’t — a nervous chuckle, fidgeting, working up a nerve. She has half a mind to reach for that _‘Are you okay?’_ sign again, but before she can, something in him budges. A crinkling of paper sounds off behind his back.

“I was gonna…try ‘n hold off until right before you kids left at the end of the week. But you look like you could use this now. Bein’ sick, I mean.”

He places it in her hands, reluctant. It’s a bulky item, not even in a box, covered with some antique wrapping paper that may as well be as old as he is. She loves it all the same, the effort that Stan had even put into wrapping a gift for her. The fact that he had a gift for her at all, really, when visiting him and Ford had always been enough for her.

Slowly, she rips at the first corner.

“Gets kinda boring between punchin’ krakens and lootin’ caves, — shocker huh? So I…uh…” he coughs, awkward, “—took up a hobby. To pass the time.”

Mabel tears away bit by bit, her heart filling the more she sees. The feel of it is nothing foreign to her. She’s held yarn long enough to know what it feels like woven and bound.

“…Took a couple months. Couple a’ tries, too, but I got the hang of it,” he rambles, scratching the back of his head uncomfortably. “It’s uh...y’know, nothin’ too special. Nothin’ better than what you could whip up.”

She tunes out his words as they come — in part, that any self-deprecation Stan had for himself was a no-go, but mostly by the overwhelming lump that forms in her chest at the gift itself.

A sweater.

The paper falls away, and so does Stan’s attempt to finish his thought. Mabel’s eyes wander from stitch to stitch, taking in every bit of detail in the garment before her. Hand-knit with all its perfect imperfections, she rubs at every knit, every purl that made this come to be. Made with a weight bulkier than her own, it’s almost like she can feel the Arctic through her fingertips.

Blue like the waters they crossed. Warm as the fabrics they wore.

It’s a piece of the ocean if she’s ever held one before, the smallest proof that she was out there with him, all those nights on the waves.

“…so…whaddaya think?”

She can’t think at all, really.

It’s a miracle she can even form a sentence.

They’re the first words she’s spoken in three whole days, but in the sea of silence she’s left them in, they're the loudest of all: “…It’s… _beautiful_ , Grunkle Stan!”

The wear on her throat is forgotten in the minutes that she holds it. In its a place, a newer, different type of it seizes her with all it has. There are a million things on her tongue — compliments, questions, more senseless thoughts all still trying to process the same beautiful truth.  

Stan made her a sweater. He learned her craft, he persevered, and he made one, just for her. Her eyes are alit with a joy so pure, so _touched_ , like the mere gesture itself could heal her from the inside out.  

His eyes light up too, a grin that manifests in full force. “You really like it, huh?”

Before he has a chance to help her put it on, Mabel’s throwing it over herself. In her excitement, she nearly mistakes one of the sleeves for the head hole, but scrambles enough to find their respective openings. She’s glowing when her head emerges from the top, stretching the fabric out in front of her to admire it in all its beauty.

It’s a wearable hug if she’s ever felt one before. All knitted by Stan. Perpetual embraces through sweaters is a philosophy that hits her a little harder this time around, like there’s a way they can be connected all year. He and Ford have adventures left to embark on, but she can still feel him any time she wishes.

There’s a quiver on her lips when she looks at him. The waterworks were coming. She barely makes out the next words, but it isn’t her sore throat this time.

“You tell me.”

Like it’s the only answer he’d ever been looking for, it sends him after her, gathering her in his arms with a gruffy laugh. As if to squeeze the tears right out of her, it’s the way he hugs her close that sends them free.

It’s all so dumb, why is she crying, she’s so _happy_. Mabel loses her train of thought the more she searches for it, but the longer he holds her, the more Stan reminds her just how okay that can be.

Mabel sniffles against his chest, but she never lets a tear reach her sweater.

“Thank you, Grunkle Stan…” she says, hiccupping. She’s hugging herself and hugging him all the same, and it feels right. “I…I love it.”

* * *

Later — minutes, hours — she feels a second set of hands on her. Small like hers, but warmer than her own. When they curl around her, the familiar tinge of light that blooms through their fingertips feels like butterflies on her back. She doesn’t need to look up to know they’re Dipper’s

And then there’s another, far larger than hers and Dipper’s. Larger than Stan’s too, but just as soothing when they wrap around her too. More patches of warmth. More reasons to feel whole. The last piece of their tender puzzle, Ford seats himself to cocoon them all, arms enveloping the twins, and Stan at his side.

They speak a language to her without syllables, but it’s one she speaks so fluently that they don’t need to.

Long after they gather, there are no voices. It’s a peace that needs no spoken word. Their lapse of silence is still filled with more than her signs could ever convey, somehow everything and nothing all at once. So graciously wrapped up in it all, she starts to doubt that losing her voice had ever been a tragedy to begin with.

Mabel smiles, burying her head deeper.

Being speechless has never felt so wonderful.

 


End file.
